1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to a device and a method for assisting in the driving of a motor vehicle.
The present invention relates to the methods and the devices intended to provide assistance in the driving of motor vehicles, particularly when the outside brightness or variations of outside brightness may disturb the driving of the driver.
2. Description of the Related Art
While the vehicle is moving, the driver of a vehicle has to permanently look outside the vehicle to be warned of any danger likely to provoke an accident. Now, the vision of the driver is regularly disturbed by the outside brightness, whether from glare due to the sun, due to the lights of an oncoming vehicle or of a following vehicle, or even by abrupt variation of brightness as when entering or leaving a tunnel.
In order to improve the comfort and the safety of the driver, a number of solutions have been proposed. One of them consists in using a screen with variable transmission, in the form for example of spectacles worn by the driver, the transparency of which varies as a function of a transmission coefficient applied to the screen. The computation of this coefficient is for example performed from a measurement of brightness by a single sensor situated on the vehicle. Thus, the transmission coefficient is adapted to the ambient brightness detected by the sensor to set the transparency of the screen with variable transmission.
Nevertheless, this solution does not make it possible to adapt the transmission coefficient to enough situations that can be encountered by the vehicle and which require a particular processing. For example, when a strong light source dazzles the driver, the screen with variable transmission will reduce its transparency and therefore lessen the vision of the driver to prevent the glare. Nevertheless, in this case, if the driver looks at another area of the road that is darker, the reduced transparency of the screen with variable transmission will reduce his or her visibility in this darker area even though a pedestrian or a traffic light that the driver will not see or may barely see may be situated in this area. The danger represented by such a situation will easily be understood.
The invention aims to mitigate at least some of the drawbacks of the known driving assistance devices and methods.